Until Spring (8 page)

"It's not that I didn't love you," she had told him in parting. "It's just that I needed a man who could respond to me. And you never could."

The sad thing about it all was that he could have, he would have, if he'd only known how important it was to her. It wasn't that he wasn't empathetic. If anything, when faced with human problems, he always cared too much. But in the macho atmosphere in which he'd grown up, it hadn't been cool to show his feelings. With Rooney and with his own father, it had embarrassed them when he tried. He learned how to cover up his caring, although he'd often managed to show people how he felt by his actions.

Then when he got married, it seemed like a whole new ball game. With his wife, he hadn't known how important it was to show how he felt, which meant that he'd really bungled their relationship. As he'd told her before she left, it wasn't that easy to open up after a lifetime of suppressing the expression of his emotions.

He'd had a couple of relationships since his divorce, and he'd worked on showing that he was the kind of understanding guy a woman would want. The relationships had never been too serious, but he felt equipped to deal with women now in a way that he had never been before, and he even felt grateful to Sigrid for making him learn something important about himself before it was too late.

Sigrid was very happy now; she had married her lover, and they were living in Albuquerque. Sigrid was expecting a baby soon.

And he, Duncan, was still alone. Since Jane had come, he hadn't felt so lonely, though. It was good to have a woman around again, even a woman who hardly spoke to him.

He'd been surprised to find that, despite the impression of Little Girl Lost, he felt desire for her as he watched her moving around his house. She was a lovely woman. He chose not to act on his sexual attraction to her because he didn't want to add to whatever burdens she carried, and he suspected that they were considerable. He had never, for instance, bought that cock-and-bull story about her having a place to stay with a girlfriend in California.

Tonight she'd acted so skittish. He couldn't figure her. Her moods swung from confused to grateful to disoriented to apprehensive. Most of the time she seemed to be saying, "Please, please like me." Other times, he could swear she was recoiling from his presence.

Later that night, after Jane's light went out behind her closed bedroom door, Duncan roused himself from his solitary thoughts and went out again. He walked over to Rooney's house, something he often did late at night when he couldn't sleep. Rooney claimed to need very little sleep and usually stayed up past midnight.

The two of them had, over the years, engaged in some productive bull sessions. The topics they covered ranged from cattle breeding to llama salesmanship, from getting along with women to rearing a ten-year-old girl. It was Duncan's belief that men could only be friends with men and women could only be friends with women. His friendship with Rooney over the years seemed to bear that out. Sigrid, his ex-wife, had certainly never been his friend.

When Duncan walked in the door, Rooney welcomed him, offering him a cup of strong coffee, which Duncan turned down, figuring that the coffee would only keep him wider awake.

"So how's Jane?" Rooney wanted to know when they were sitting at the scarred old kitchen table finishing off the cheesecake Rooney had bought in town today. Mary Kate loved cheesecake and so did Duncan.

Duncan shrugged. "I don't know. Seems like she's recovering all right in a physical way, but I don't know what she's thinking. She's a strange woman, Rooney," he said.

Rooney lifted his eyebrows. "Ain't they all?"

"Not like her. She doesn't say much and certainly never mentions anything about herself."

"What do you expect? She might have an unsavory past. You don't know where she came from. You ain't even sure where she's going."

Duncan considered this and decided there was merit in it. "That makes sense, I suppose, except that she doesn't look like somebody who could do anything wrong. She's an attractive woman, Rooney. Have you ever noticed her eyes? And her hair? She reminds me of a Dresden figurine my grandmother used to have."

Rooney shot him a keen look. "Hey, you're not starting to feel something for her, are you?"

Duncan shifted uncomfortably in his chair before answering. "I don't know, Rooney. If anything, I'm sorry for her. She's such a sad little thing. She seldom smiles."

"She looks like a lady with a secret to me, old boy. If I was you, I wouldn't want to get too close. Never know when you might regret it."

"I thought maybe she'd open up when she started to feel better, maybe tell me why she's so all-fired eager to get to California. If that's where she's headed, that is. I see things about her that don't compute. I look at that ragged coat she was wearing when I found her and I wonder, 'How the dickens did she end up with a man's beat-up old topcoat to wear?' I've nearly worn myself out trying to figure her."

Rooney got up to pour more coffee into his cup. Before he sat down again, he clapped Duncan on the shoulder.

"You always did like a mystery, son. You'd better stick to the book variety, if you ask me. That reminds me. I picked up a few more mystery books at the library when I was in town. You want to take one home with you? Might get your mind off that little gal over there."

Duncan sighed, wishing that he hadn't confided in Rooney after all. "Yeah, Rooney, show me what you've got. I wouldn't mind reading for a while before I go to sleep," he said.

Rooney produced three well-worn paperback mystery books, and Duncan chose the most promising one and took it home and to bed. All the while Duncan was reading, he couldn't stop pondering the mystery in his own house.

* * *

Jane rose the next morning before it was light, slipping into the jeans and shirt she'd been wearing when she found her way to the mine. Over those she put on the old coat, grateful that it was so warm and thick. It was bound to be cold outside.

She folded the discarded shirt of Duncan's that she used for a nightgown and left it on the bed. Carefully, feeling her way in the dark and with only the night-light from the bathroom for illumination, she pulled the blue bedspread neatly over the bed and patted it into place. She would certainly miss this bed. It had been very comfortable.

She left the comb and brush and toiletries in the bathroom. After a moment's thought, she pocketed the toothbrush. No one else would want it, and Duncan would end up throwing it away, which seemed to her to be an awful waste of a useful object.

She tiptoed over to the heat register and picked up Amos, who, barely awake, snuggled unprotestingly inside her coat. Then, carefully and silently, she made her way downstairs.

The house was quiet, the outlines of the furniture barely discernible in the dark. Tears stung her eyes as she made her way through the living room saying goodbye to everything.
Goodbye, couch,
she said to herself as she passed it.
Goodbye, television set. Goodbye, fireplace.
It seemed silly and sentimental to say goodbye to inanimate things, but at least it gave her words to occupy her mind. She was afraid that if she thought about how much she would miss all the comforts that most people took for granted, she might not be able to leave after all.

She paused at the table beside the door. She felt around for the tray where Duncan kept his money. Her fingers closed around his wallet. He was such a trusting soul, Duncan. A person shouldn't trust other people so much.

She knew she had to survive somehow but felt terribly guilty about taking his money. She picked up the wallet anyway. She carried it into the kitchen, where she shifted her weight first from one foot to the other in indecision. Yet what else could she do?

I'll pay it back,
she thought. She set Amos down on the floor, and he immediately went to his food dish and started to eat.

She knew the location of the switch to turn on the light over the sink, and she flipped it. She hadn't wanted to turn on any lights, but Duncan wouldn't be able to see this one from upstairs even if he got up, which she figured was unlikely at this hour.

Quickly she scrawled a note on the pad beside the telephone.

Duncan,

I needed money, so I took some out of your wallet. I'll
pay you back as soon as I can.

Please think well of me,
she added after a pause. That was stupid, considering that she was actually robbing the man. She didn't like the way the last sentence read but didn't want to scratch it out because then the note would look sloppy, and she didn't want him to think she was the kind of person who didn't care how a note looked to the person who received it. She signed it simply, "
Jane
."

      She checked the money in the wallet. There were sixty dollars, so after a moment's deliberation she took fifty and left him ten. She stuffed the money into her coat pocket along with a few packages of crackers that were on the counter and started to pick up Amos.

He pulled away from her, something he did so infrequently that it took her by surprise. He continued to eat the cat chow that Duncan had left in the dish for him.

At first she intended to let Amos finish the last of the food because she had no idea where their next meal would come from nor how long it would be until it materialized. Then she realized that there might not be any next meal for a long time and that she was being most unfair to Amos by taking him away from a place where he was sure to be warm and well fed. In the past week, his body had filled out and he didn't look so scrawny. His fur seemed thicker and sleeker.

"Amos, I guess this is where we come to a parting of the ways," she murmured. The thought of the lonely hours without him looming ahead of her brought a catch to her throat and a fresh supply of tears to her eyes.

"Oh, Amos," she said, gathering the cat into her arms, and she buried her face in his ginger fur one last time. Puzzled by the unexpected display of affection, he twisted in her arms and batted an experimental paw against her cheek, seeming surprised to discover that it was wet.

Blinded by her tears, she put him down and quickly let herself out of the house before she lost her resolve. Then she set out for the highway. She knew exactly how to get there. Mary Kate had told her.

"Goodbye, llamas," she said as she passed the barn, regretting that she'd never learned anything more about them, had never, in fact, seen one up close. She spared a thought for Mary Kate, wondering if the child would miss her. Then she resolutely turned her back on Placid Valley Ranch.

She reached the highway as the sun sent up feeble fingers of light from the horizon. It was cold, but her coat kept her warm enough. Her breath preceded her in wispy clouds of mist that then trailed behind her as she walked, and as she plodded along she felt herself growing weary already. She was still weak from the strep and bronchitis, she thought. She'd soon be over that, and she had brought the half-used bottle of antibiotic pills with her. They'd continue to fight the infection.

If she were lucky, somebody would stop to pick her up soon. She gazed down the road, watching as a car barreled toward her. She stuck out her thumb and it whizzed past. Perhaps she'd have better luck next time.

She traipsed stoically through chunks of dirty snow at the edge of the highway, avoiding slippery patches of ice on the pavement. The next vehicle was a flatbed truck, and the driver didn't even notice her much less stop to pick her up.

Jane blew on her gloveless hands to warm them, then thrust them deeper into her pockets, where Duncan's money crackled against her knuckles. She closed her hand around the bills, reassured by the security of cash. She walked westward, but no cars came for a long time. Finally she heard one approaching in the distance.

She turned toward it and stuck out her thumb, thinking that next time she hitchhiked in cold weather, she'd make sure she wore a pair of gloves. The big SUV roared toward her at a blistering speed. And then it squealed to a stop.

She had barely wrenched the door open when a familiar voice growled, "Get in." It stopped her flat.

"You heard what I said," Duncan told her, barely containing his fury. He reached across the front seat and grabbed her wrist, yanking her toward him. She cried out in pain but clambered inside and watched him fearfully, wondering what he would do. Certainly he must have found out that she'd taken his money.

He slammed the vehicle into reverse and backed up, completing a turn in record time. When they were heading back to the ranch, he said coldly, "That was a fool thing to do."

Jane stared ahead, unwilling to face his anger.

"The two weeks you need for recuperating aren't up yet, and I don't take kindly to thieves. Also you left your cat."

At the mention of Amos, Jane's eyes filled with tears. She let them roll forlornly down her cheeks, hating herself for stealing and for her weakness now in front of Duncan. Duncan glanced over at her as they approached the turn onto the ranch road. He tossed a tissue in her direction.

"Use that," he said more calmly. "Mop up."

Obediently she wiped her eyes. She turned toward him, wanting to explain.

"I was going to pay the money back," she said.

"We'll talk about it inside," he said gruffly.

Wordlessly she followed him into the house, where Amos ran to greet them, purring and rubbing against her ankles.